Deon Meyer - Blood Safari

‘No, you’re lying to me. Tomorrow I’m going to the Beeld newspaper with everything. You can try and tell your tall story to the journalists.’

Branca began to speak but Stef Moller stopped him with a hand in the air. ‘Lemmer, please, what can I do to convince you?’ he said slowly.

‘Tell the truth, Stef.’

‘That’s what we’ve been doing the whole time.’

‘No, it isn’t. Cobie is Emma’s brother. Donnie said the photo that disappeared – someone didn’t want Emma to see it. Why wouldn’t you want Emma to see it? Why would Frank phone Emma about it? Why do you still insist that he’s not Emma’s brother?’

‘Because we asked him,’ said Stef.

‘When?’

‘Three days ago. Saturday. Cobie de Villiers said he had never heard of her.’

37

I had to restrain myself. I wanted to get up and grab Stef by the throat and shake him. ‘So why are you lying to me about where Cobie is?’ But he must have known what my reaction would be.

‘We don’t know where he is, Lemmer. He phoned out of the blue. He said that he’d heard that Frank Wolhuter was dead. We must be very careful, because the people who did it are very dangerous. We must take precautions; we must arm ourselves and make sure we are never alone. I asked him where he was and he said it didn’t matter. I asked him about Emma and he said he had no family, he didn’t know anyone like that.’

‘Did you ask him why he shot those people?’

‘I didn’t need to. We know it was him.’

‘But Frank and Donnie swore it wasn’t him.’

Donnie Branca half rose indignantly. ‘What did you expect, Lemmer? Be realistic, for Christ’s sake. Frank didn’t believe it was Cobus. What did you want me to do? Go tell everybody, “Yes, Cobie shot them in cold blood, the bastard”? I mean, Jesus.’

‘Sit down, Donnie.’ But it didn’t help. He was angry. He got up, walked a circle in the dark and came back to stand in front of me.

‘Fuck you, Lemmer. What are you going to do? Shoot me? I’m sick and tired of you. If there’s something that proves Cobie is Emma’s brother, it’s not our business. The stupid fuck went and shot innocent people and put twelve years’ work at risk. Twelve fucking years. That’s how long Stef worked to get Hb going, to make it work. You shake your fucking head when we talk about the threat to the environment. You’re just like everybody. The media, the government, the fucking public, everybody is in denial. You have no idea what’s happening, Lemmer. All over the world. It’s a fucking mess. I dare you, go do your homework. Go look at the facts. Go read the scientific material. All of it.

Not just climate change. Everything. Loss of habitat, deforestation, population growth, pollution, land abuse, urban sprawl, development, poaching, smuggling, poverty, globalisation. And then come back and tell me that there’s no crisis. Go to the media. Expose us. See if you can stop it.’

‘Donnie,’ Stef Moller placated him.

‘Jesus, Stef, I’ve had enough of this fucking fool. Read my lips, Lemmer. We did not touch Frank or Emma. And if you don’t believe that, you can go fuck yourself.’ He stalked off to the side of the pick-up, opened the door and said, ‘Come on, Stef, let’s go,’ slammed the door and started the engine.

Stef Moller slowly got up and walked past me. ‘He’s right,’ was all he said. He got into the pick-up and I had to move out of the way, because it didn’t seem as though Donnie Branca was going to stop for me.

I’d believed that Emma was lying to me and I’d been wrong. My belief in my built-in lie detector had been shaken. I stood in the dark and watched the red lights of the Toyota disappear in the distance and I thought Donnie Branca was telling the truth and that Stef Moller was still hiding something.

If you want to know whether someone is lying, look at his eyes. It was difficult with Moller because of the constant blinking and the thick lenses. That night I couldn’t see his face in the dark and I had to listen to his voice, its rhythm and intonation. He wasn’t telling the whole truth.

Or was it my imagination?

I went back to my nest.

Tall Stef Moller with his bald pate and glasses and his slow, solemn way of speaking. I thought he was harmless the day we’d met him. Even though something had bothered me in the shed, something I had missed.

Tall, dispassionate men are not high on a bodyguard’s list of threats. The assassins of history have been short, busy little men. Lee Harvey Oswald, Dmitri Tsafendas, John Hinckley, Mark David Chapman.

I hadn’t expected Moller here tonight. It was his voice which had convinced me to come out from cover and call to them, because I didn’t identify him with cold-blooded attacks and violence. It wasn’t just an instinct. Stef Moller had an aura of the oppressed and wounded about him.

But I did know that he was lying. About something.

What bothered me about the shed?

Branca hadn’t been involved in the attack on Emma and myself. I believed him.

Who was it, then?

And why was Moller lying? Had he sent someone else? Didn’t he trust Branca enough, and were there other Hb troops willing to do dirty work?

The people who did it are very dangerous. We must take precautions. We must arm ourselves and make sure that we are never alone.

Had he said that with authority or a bit of fear? Even so, they hadn’t brought weapons with them tonight. Or were they concealed in the pick-up?

What had I seen in Moller’s shed?

I sat down with my Twinkies and Energade. I could not relax. I had to stay alert, ready.

The day Emma and I were there, the shed had been fairly gloomy, the only light coming through the double doors. There were steel shelves on the walls, big drums of diesel or oil, workbenches covered with spare parts, oil rags, tins and cans, nuts and bolts, tools and …

I picked up a bottle of Energade and took a swig. I shut my eyes and concentrated.

On the workbench two metres from Moller there had been a carburettor and the cover of an air filter with the broken air filter beside it and … a tray.

An old reddish-brown tray with a cork base and a sugar bowl and coffee mugs, that’s what caught my attention.

The coffee mugs.

Why?

Because there were three of them. Three coffee mugs, two empty, one half full.

I stood up in the dark forest, bottle in one hand, Glock in the other.

There’s only Septimus and myself, no other labour. That’s what Stef Moller had said. But there were three ugly khaki brown mugs with their teaspoons standing upright in them and someone hadn’t finished their coffee. Two people, three mugs, it didn’t add up. Someone else had been in that shed when Emma phoned from the gate. Someone who didn’t want to be seen.

I collected my things and began jogging to the homestead. I had a good idea who that third person had been.

I believed he was still at Heuningklip and that was why Stef Moller was lying to me.

It took nearly three hours to drive the two hundred and fifty kilometres to Heuningklip. There were heavy trucks in the mountain passes and sharp bends invisible in the night up the escarpment.

I drove through Nelspruit and wondered how Emma was, wanting to make a detour to hold her hand. Talk to her. I wanted to ask her what she had been thinking when she came and stood beside my bed, but I also wanted her to remain silent so I could preserve the possibility of multiple answers.

I turned right on the R38 just beyond the Suidkaap river and thought about Stef Moller, the shy rich man. Melanie Posthumus had said he’s this billionaire that bought all these farms and made them nice, but nobody knows where his money came from.